The restriction was put in place after Microsoft claimed that Motorola was abusing its Frand-commitments - a promise to licence innovations deemed critical to widely-used technologies under "fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory" terms."

So the camel jockeys of Pakistan care more about freedom of speech/expression than the 'home of the free'? LOL. I'm guessing they also don't submit people to grope sessions just to fly planes either.

It takes a bit more courage to take on the establishment in Pakistan than it does in the USA. In Pakistan the reactionaries can lock you up and torture or even 'disappear' their own citizens if they get too annoying, in the USA they are still stuck at the 'I'd like to be able to do that to people other than renditioned foreigners' stage.

So the camel jockeys of Pakistan care more about freedom of speech/expression than the 'home of the free'? LOL. I'm guessing they also don't submit people to grope sessions just to fly planes either.

It takes a bit more courage to take on the establishment in Pakistan than it does in the USA. In Pakistan the reactionaries can lock you up and torture or even 'disappear' their own citizens if they get too annoying, in the USA they are still stuck at the 'I'd like to be able to do that to people other than renditioned foreigners' stage.

Well, that makes the US citizens seem rather lame, a big bunch of pussies that don't do a thing to protect that freedom themselves. Relying completely on a government to protect that freedom while that government is showing time and time again that its trying to erode that very freedom.

FTFY. Here in the US, we get around the "well you can only arrest people who break the law" by creating so many laws and such a complex legal system that almost everyone is guilty of something

That's true in most countries but it's more due to laws piling up and nobody ever working up the energy to clean out the cruft. My uncle used to be a cop in a small fishing village, one day he caught a couple of foreign sailors who had stolen a goat and slaughtered it. When he looked up the relevant passage in his law book (nobody had stolen livestock in this place for over a hundred years) and immediately called the justice ministry to ask for advice. The lawyer at the other end got pretty annoyed over bei

Here in the US, we get around the "well you can only arrest people who break the law" by creating so many laws and such a complex legal system that almost everyone is guilty of something.

Don't forget the prison-industrial complex buying and pushing 'law and order' politicians that then privatize incarceration (because government employees are to be eliminated) and increase their profits.

Actually that's pretty inaccurate. I'm going to ignore the obnoxious racism in your comment and just address the freedoms issue. No major government body in the US is trying to block fifty million websites, and if they did, the entire Supreme Court would tell them no. And the US rejected any form of blasphemy laws as unconstitional quite some time ago. Pakistan still allows the execution of people for blasphemy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blasphemy_law_in_Pakistan [wikipedia.org]. Shabaz Bhatti http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shahbaz_Bhatti [wikipedia.org] was assassinated just for trying to lessen the penalties on the blasphemy laws. As to the matter of grope sessions to fly planes- Pakistan has essentially close to almost no equivalent of Fourth Amendment protections. The US and Europe are not in great shape right now, and there's no question that human rights have been getting better in Pakistan in the last few years (especially post-Musharraf), but let's not lose perspective here on overall which is set of countries is doing better for human rights.

Dude, you're on Slashdot, home of autistic geek filth that lives in tiny mental bubbles where the US has become the worst place ever in the history of the universe or any fictional work, and everything is measured in multiple Hitlers. For example, buying an iPhone makes you as bad as 6 Hitlers.

No major government body in the US is trying to block fifty million websites

I guess lobbyists from the MPAA and RIAA are not technically part of the government; they only pad the wallets of politicians and draft legislation for them.

the US rejected any form of blasphemy laws as unconstitional quite some time ago

While simultaneously making other classes of speech illegal. Just because we violate free speech rights differently than the Pakistanis would does not mean that we are not violating free speech rights.

As to the matter of grope sessions to fly planes- Pakistan has essentially close to almost no equivalent of Fourth Amendment protections

So on the one hand, Pakistan has no privacy laws, and on the other the US simply ignores its privacy laws and publicly humiliates its citizens. Here is the question you were trying to answer, but failed to: does Pakistan grope its citizens en masse, the way the United States does?

there's no question that human rights have been getting better in Pakistan

Here is what you left out: human rights have been getting worse in the United States, and are worsening at an accelerating pace. Freedom of speech? Only if you do not bother the important people with it. Privacy rights? Only if you never travel or communicate electronically. The right to live a free and happy life? Only if you are not a member of the world's largest prison population, which in case anyone has forgotten is the prison population of the United States.

To put it another way, is it the US or Pakistan that has paramilitary police forces that shoot innocent people with assault rifles and add personal assets to their budgets, with the approval and encouragement of the government?

Actually, ISPs in the US don't block copyright infringing websites, so your first bit doesn't hold. As to your claim that other areas of free speech are restricted in the US, exactly what speech are you talking about? In the US we have some of the strongest free speech rights on the planet. You can criticize politicians, or religous leaders, or the rich, or pretty much anything else. Please give a single example of some form of speech allowed in Pakistan that isn't allowed in the US.

So on the one hand, Pakistan has no privacy laws, and on the other the US simply ignores its privacy laws and publicly humiliates its citizens. Here is the question you were trying to answer, but failed to: does Pakistan grope its citizens en masse, the way the United States does?

Most of your reply isn't really relevant because I've agreed with you that the US has serious problems and that some of them are getting worse. In that context, pointing to specific problems doesn't really do much. But it may be instructive to look at your examples:

Tarek Mehanna is an appalling example and not the only such case. Ward Churchill was guilty of severe plagiarism. It is true that people paid more attention to him and the plagiarism accusations because of his politically controversial state

Your reply leads me to suspect that you probably have never stepped foot out of your own city, much less country. You have no idea how few rights people in most of the world have and how repressive the governments of countries like Pakistan, China, Iran, etc., are. I have to just laugh at your real ignorance of the rest of the world's situation. While the US has its problems, reporters aren't being shot down in "broad daylight" as in Brazil, Mexico, etc. I really do suggest you go spend a few years in just

Don't worry, citizen. Everything the government does is to keep you safe. Lying, molesting people at airports, warrantless wiretapping... it's all for you! You should feel honored that we're keeping you safe!

People are trained from kindergarden onwards to think that if someone tries to do something privately or in secret, they must be doing something that breaks the rules. We are also trained from kindergarden onwards to think that the rules are sacred and must not be broken, so people wind up thinking that anyone who wants privacy must be doing some immoral.

Our guys have been asleep at the wheel for the last 10 years. I'm pretty sure at this point that most of the U.S. Justices don't even know there *is* a 4th Amendment, much less what it says.

I'm pretty sure there is another possibility - that they in fact do understand it, as applied, and you don't. One of the big stumbling blocks is people keep refusing to acknowledge the difference between procedure under ordinary criminal law, and the law of war, or national security law more generally. Most people here have a better understanding of cheese, which still baffles them, than they do of how the Constitution applies to armed conflict.

Our guys have been asleep at the wheel for the last 10 years. I'm pretty sure at this point that most of the U.S. Justices don't even know there *is* a 4th Amendment, much less what it says.

Actually, to the surprise of quite a few observers (myself included), the Supreme Court just unanimously ruled that law enforcement agencies can't simply slap a GPS tracker on your car [washingtonpost.com] without a warrant. The majority's ruling was actually relatively limited, but was based on 4th Amendment grounds. Alito and several of

And where is that band who so vauntingly sworeThat the havoc of war and the battle's confusion,A home and a country, should leave us no more?Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution.No refuge could save the hireling and slaveFrom the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:

The government can't be seen offending their own people. They're more progressive than they let on. Because of the threat of violence from the religious fundies, the progressives often disguise their actions or appear to be "arguing for" something they are actually against.

All of the institutions in Pakistan have to walk lines between the progress the lawyers and intellectuals and professors want to see happen and what the religious fundies will tolerate. It's not that different in the US. as the etch-a-sketch positioning in the Republican primaries reveal. You can't alienate that much of your (stupid) electorate and expect to get or stay in power.

The government and most of the military in Pakistan hates the Taliban as much as anyone and was as glad as we were when we did bin Laden Of course they had to act outraged.

Pakistan is chock -o-block full with highly intelligent forward looking progressives who aren't drinking the Kool-aid. That's why the drone program is a great thing. The religious head cases in Waziristan are hated by many Pakis as much as they're hated by us, and both the Pakistan government and its military smile every time a fundie gets dished out to him what he earnestly sought to dish out to civil society.

Just like with any other country, you can't understand the international headlines unless you have at least a basic grasp of the domestic politics.

Pakistan's liberal voice is going to be diminish, which is a dangerous precedent. The way in which killer of Punjab province governor was welcomed with so much rose explain how ultra conservative muslim is going influence a major portion of public thought. Recently after US issued a bounty on Hafiz Saeed when 'anti america' emotion with nationalist mood is at it's peak level simply fuel spread of 'mullah ' thought (orthodox & anti america anti india) on internet via social networking site. Therefore Zar

Pakistan's fundies , just like our fundies in the US, may use terror to intimidate the voice of Pakistan's progressives, but rest assured if they got into power, banning websites with which they disagreer would be the first order of the day, just as Rick Santorum was planning to make p0rn sites illegal.

But there are tens of thousands of expat Pakis who can and do put up websites to combat extremeist thoughts and if they're not blocked in Pakistan, there's little the fundies in Pak cn do to stop people in

Look at what's happening to the conservatard hatred of homosexuality in the US. They themselves admit they've lost "this battle" against gay acceptance. That's the power of ideas.

Rick Santorum made it to the level of Presidential Candidate, not to mention Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, and GWB. That's also the power of ideas.

It's on. It's on between the forces of darkness- the religious fundies in every nation- and civilization. My bet is on civilization. Let's roll.

I applaud your optimism but think you're way too optimistic. Renouncing Islam in Pakistan is still a capital offence. Being raped in Pakistan can land a woman in jail. Just walking to school can buy a girl a face full of sulphuric acid. Allah akbar. A religion of peace.

Plenty of countries throughout history have let themselves be held hostage by a minority compo

That's welcome news that Pakistan is not as evil as their talking points make them out to be, but I'm skeptical. Osama was just down the street for years. They were so hamstrung by fear of the far right that they couldn't send an anonymous note to us saying "Hey, uh, we didn't tell you this, but 123 main street, Abbottabad. Check it out. Thanks in advance, and know that the whole outrage thing we're going to pull is just an act."?

If that strikes you as unlikely, consider this. bin Laden had every reason to be paranoid- the full power of the US intelligence community was looking for him. One leaking person and it's game over. What's he going to do?

Not let anyone not in his family or his inner circle know where he is. Even if the majority of the upper echelon of Pakistani armed forces was FOR him- and they're not- but even if that was true, he'd still have to worry about someone tel

Yes it is; the ISI is shot through with people who are tali sympathizers. Some of those are in a position of power in the ISI and they're in a position to tell their underlings what to do the same way your boss is, except with the implicit threat of personal harm added in if you don't do it. It's just like any other organization in which there are power struggles. There's in fighting and conniving and looking the other way and wanting to hang on to your job.

We've both made our thoughts clear already. I just find myself having to reply anyway. The easy construct "one rouge team" is problematic -in the extreme - in reality.

There's the secrecy issue. Then there's the problem of finding people who both have the access they would need to alert bin Laden and also the indubitable sincerity and uncompromising world view that would permit them to keep that secret to only themselves for what appears to be years.

I'm sure everyone here loves spending every waking hour fighting CISPA/PIPA/SOPA/ACTA or every other incarnation that will be silently pushed into law. We must demand a Constitutional amendment that clearly defines personal privacy and Internet usage as an inalienable right. The days of hoping your representative Democracy will work for you are sadly over.

We must demand a Constitutional amendment that clearly defines personal privacy and Internet usage as an inalienable right. The days of hoping your representative Democracy will work for you are sadly over.